An aggressive salesperson's reach for licensing fees leads to a CEO semi-apology.

When is free not free? When it comes to Appcelerator's Titanium mobile developer tools, the answer is "when you make money from it." Confusion over the company's license and some aggressive attempts at revenue generation by Appcelerator's sales team have led to a complaint from a developer on the company's forum accusing the company of "extortionate fees," an apology from the CEO, and arguments about the ethical use of open-source licensing.

As a result, the company says it is working to remove the "confusion" around its licensing, which blends an open-source software developer kit with a proprietary integrated development tool. "Rarely does this happen that we get such confusion and noise (about the licensing)," Appcelerator Vice President of Products Jonathan Rende said in an interview with Ars. "We acknowledge there's some confusion on our licensing. We hear the feedback loud and clear. We're going to make sure the message is very clear as we approach customers in the future. Our developer community is super important to us, and we want to do right by them."

Appcelerator's Titanium development tool allows programmers to build native applications for Apple's iOS and Google Android mobile operating systems using JavaScript and a framework that connects to the operating system's native widgets (rather than using HTML5). It's available in a free version called App Explore. The core software developer kit is available as open-source source code under an Apache license through GitHub. "We give our software away for FREE!" the Titanium Mobile "readme" proclaims. "In order to do that, we have programs for companies that require [an] additional level of assistance through training or commercial support, need special licensing or want additional levels of capabilities."

Based on that wording, Malcolm Bailey, proprietor of the small UK-based custom development shop Bluesky Industries, thought he was in the clear. He used the tool to develop a free application for a client under his company's account, using no support or services from Appcelerator.

But two weeks after the application was posted to the App Store, he was contacted by an Appcelerator salesperson who informed him he would need to pay £5000 (about $10,000) for a commercial license—or the app would be yanked from the App Store for intellectual property infringement. His client was also told by Appcelerator that they would have to purchase the same license.

Bailey posted his story to the Appcelerator developer forum—and seemed more frustrated about Appcelerator contacting his client than the licensing issue. "If I use Photoshop to develop a logo," he wrote, "would Adobe contact my client to ask them for a license as well?" Other developers in the UK reported in the forum that they had been contacted in the same way.

The key, apparently, is that Bailey (and others) used the free distribution of Titanium and its developer tools, instead of compiling an SDK from the source on the GitHub site and using another tool to write their code. But there's little if anything in the licensing information on GitHub, which links to the pre-built version as well, to let developers know that—the licensing agreement is displayed when developers first run the Titanium Studio developer tools. Rende admitted that this causes confusion over what part of the toolset is open source and which is commercial—as well as what developers' rights with the tool are, since it's not well-documented elsewhere.

In a response on the site, Appcelerator CEO and co-founder Jeff Haynie apologized for the confusion, and for the apparent shakedown. "To be crystal clear here, our intentions are that we will not charge for development that happens under the "App Explore" product (i.e., the free version)," Haynie wrote. "Usage of the Appcelerator platform at this level is permitted for all applications, both commercial and free, with no financial obligation to Appcelerator." And in a response to comments on his answer, Haynie reiterated that Appcelerator's employees should have never contacted the developer's customer, "and it is totally unacceptable to have contacted your customer if that is what you say has happened. We should NEVER do that EVER without your permission or without your assistance."

However, Haynie was defensive about the licensing fees, saying "we certainly NEVER intend to extort money from anyone. I simply don't see how you can draw a straight line from spending literally tens of MILLIONS of dollars this year alone on Titanium and providing it for FREE to well over 98% of the users—and then say that we're 'extorting people'. Was the sales rep over eager and trying to hussle to get a deal? Probably. In my opinion, that's the job of the rep and we work with hundreds of new paying customers each quarter and we've only had a few complaints about it. Do they need better training and coaching? Yes."

The exchange drew a number of heated responses from other developers, including a blog post by developer and author Kay Rhodes that questioned the morals of Appcelerator's management. "Do not work with this company," Rhodes wrote. "Please. You're better than that. 99.99999% of humanity is better than that, and if you've got clients you definitely don't want to risk your reputation with them by working with a company this morally bankrupt."

Rende wouldn't comment on the accuracy of the complaints from Bailey and others, stating that "we had a very good conversation with the customer," and that the company's focus would be on clarifying the licensing up-front for both the community of developers using the open-source version of the SDK and for commercial customers. "The community is really valuable to us," he said, "and as part of clarifying (the licensing), we want to review it with community before we finalize it."

51 Reader Comments

Contacting a developer is one thing, but contacting the developer's client is completely crossing the line. I am a developer and I would raise hell if that ever happened to me. I think Mr. Rhodes is right. Do not work with this company.

Was the sales rep over eager and trying to hussle to get a deal? Probably. In my opinion, that's the job of the rep and we work with hundreds of new paying customers each quarter and we've only had a few complaints about it. Do they need better training and coaching? Yes."

so hes apologizing by saying its the sales rep job to do this? what kind of apology is that.

Was the sales rep over eager and trying to hussle to get a deal? Probably. In my opinion, that's the job of the rep and we work with hundreds of new paying customers each quarter and we've only had a few complaints about it. Do they need better training and coaching? Yes."

so hes apologizing by saying its the sales rep job to do this? what kind of apology is that.

"I am sorry. Not sorry about this particular, loathsome part, but I am sorry in general. So we're good, right?"

Was the sales rep over eager and trying to hussle to get a deal? Probably. In my opinion, that's the job of the rep and we work with hundreds of new paying customers each quarter and we've only had a few complaints about it. Do they need better training and coaching? Yes."

so hes apologizing by saying its the sales rep job to do this? what kind of apology is that.

A backhanded one. Sadly, this is what most sales reps are told to do. Many moons ago I worked as a so called customer service rep for a major telephone company (that shall remain nameless). We were told to aggressively try to sell services like 3-way-calling as well as physical phone sets. On the monitor in front of us we had information like the credit rating of the person we were "serving". We were to to aggressively sell our stuff to debt challenged people and old folks because they were easy sales.

Thankfully it was only a few weeks before I got a lateral transfer to the local CO. Because I flat out refused to do things like try and sell to old folks on a severely limited fixed income or people with credit issues that don't need any help in drowning in debt.

That this company doesn't post their terms up front on GitHub seems shady to me. The clincher is that the sales rep actually contacted the client of the programmer. That's absurd.

Quote:

"Rarely does this happen that we get such confusion and noise (about the licensing)," Appcelerator Vice President of Products Jonathan Rende said in an interview with Ars. "We acknowledge there's some confusion on our licensing.

From the article it doesn't sound so very rare to me. But what do you expect a contract to look like when the VP of the company says there is no problem, we acknowledge the problem?

We've had a look at Titanium a while ago. Technically it's brilliant - you only need to know HTML+CSS+JS so the usual to develop native apps for both iOS and Android, what bothered me at the time were the muddy as hell licensing terms on both Apple's and Appcelerator's sides and the fact that our codebase would be stuck only working on one niche product.In the end we've done most of the work serverside releasing HTML5 webapp + native iOS and Android apps, written in ObjC and Java respectively. Because our 'apps' are just glorified browser API calls it wasn't much effort to code anyway...

"Do not work with this company," Rhodes wrote. "Please. You're better than that. 99.99999% of humanity is better than that, and if you've got clients you definitely don't want to risk your reputation with them by working with a company this morally bankrupt."

"Do not work with this company," Rhodes wrote. "Please. You're better than that. 99.99999% of humanity is better than that, and if you've got clients you definitely don't want to risk your reputation with them by working with a company this morally bankrupt."

A bit melodramatic....

Perhaps, but I know I would fly off the handle if some software company contacted my customers and started shaking them down for licensing fees. Confusion over licensing issues is one thing (and quite common). Shaking down customers of software which you've written is something else entirely.

Contacting a developer is one thing, but contacting the developer's client is completely crossing the line. I am a developer and I would raise hell if that ever happened to me. I think Mr. Rhodes is right. Do not work with this company.

++It takes years to develop and market a product -- and one incident to destroy your reputation forever.

I agree, this company just made my "never do business with" list. No apology can make up for the utterly insane notion that you have the right to contact one of my customers over an issue with the licensing of a tool.

"Do not work with this company," Rhodes wrote. "Please. You're better than that. 99.99999% of humanity is better than that, and if you've got clients you definitely don't want to risk your reputation with them by working with a company this morally bankrupt."

A bit melodramatic....

And contacting a developer's client then demanding they pay for a $5,000 license or else isn't? What about the ridiculously murky contract. You know, the one that mentions any money changing hands only showing up in the TOS for the program when everywhere else all you see is FREE FREE FREE for advertising!

Was the sales rep over eager and trying to hussle to get a deal? Probably. In my opinion, that's the job of the rep and we work with hundreds of new paying customers each quarter and we've only had a few complaints about it. Do they need better training and coaching? Yes."

so hes apologizing by saying its the sales rep job to do this? what kind of apology is that.

"I am sorry. Not sorry about this particular, loathsome part, but I am sorry in general. So we're good, right?"

More like "I am sorry we were caught doing it. But you can't do anything about it so we are going to continue on doing what we were doing; just without being caught."

Im 100% ok with companies making money from upselling free products but what I don´t like is how this is abused. If you want to make money with your products and software do not try to be in fashion and make it open source just to push hidden fees. Nobody puts a gun on some companies and say "you need to make your product open source".

I like open source, but sometimes I completely understand you need to put money in your tables to feed your family, so open source may not be what you want to push. And its ok.

What I see more and more lately are supposed open source services and software which are nothing but open source. They are just gimmicks to gain popularity.

I do consider this to be an extortion. Pay XX$$ or the app will be removed. What else is this if its not extortion?

This can be easily avoided if companies are clear from minute one about their licenses. They know must people do not read the TOS so they put "free" but free comes with conditions, so its not really free.

Its similar to how hosting companies are deceiving customers with unlimited plans. Unlimited comes with conditions and this conditions are so clear that of course the unlimited is just a scam. Nothing is unlimited. Otherwise ask Google why they are not on those 5$ bucks unlimited plans either. In their marketing and promos they just point out what the lies, like free, unlimited, etc, but no where in their marketing material they talk about the conditions of this words.

Words are very clear. Companies abuse it. Suddenly unlimited does not really mean unlimited or it means something else, and free is not really free either. And open source is now commercial. I consider all of this to be a scam. If you use words to try to convince someone to understand something that the service or product is not, its pretty much a scam. Legal? Probably because of the TOS, but its still false marketing which is illegal.

PhoneGap is a very popular alternative in this space. IBM has a commercial product built on it, and while it's a little different approach to the problem of cross-platform mobile development , it's a viable choice for a whole lot of developers. Plus I bet you won't find IBM, Adobe or the PhoneGap folks calling your customers.

Contacting a developer is one thing, but contacting the developer's client is completely crossing the line. I am a developer and I would raise hell if that ever happened to me. I think Mr. Rhodes is right. Do not work with this company.

QFT

If this was about murky licensing and the dev getting screwed I would be really careful about having anything to do with them. But contacting the client? That's way over the line.

It looks like they're /aiming/ for this type of incident. Nobody is that stupid.

Sounds like they don't mind people backing themselves into a situation where they can hit them up for fees.

How long can they continue like that? You'd think once enough people associate this company's name with bait and switch, folks would avoid them. I've no problem with collecting licensing fees. But people need to know up front what the terms are, not feel like they're being shanghaied. And when the terms on app stores and at GitHub make no mention of anything but FREE, that's downright deceptive.

In a way this reminds me of the TV ads that push a "free sample" of their product. Then in micro sized print inform you that you're actually being signed up for a monthly service which you're obligated to cancel if you don't want your credit card charged each month. It's a shady tactic.

PhoneGap is a very popular alternative in this space. IBM has a commercial product built on it, and while it's a little different approach to the problem of cross-platform mobile development , it's a viable choice for a whole lot of developers. Plus I bet you won't find IBM, Adobe or the PhoneGap folks calling your customers.

what about Enyo? http://enyojs.com/ (the WebOS dev framework that has now been ported to other OSes and is open source)

Though, looks like it uses phonegap to accomplish some stuff (or rather phonegap uses enyo?).

"If I use Photoshop to develop a logo," he wrote, "would Adobe contact my client to ask them for a license as well?"

If the logo contains intellectual property owned by adobe, such as one of their fonts, then yes Adobe would contact your client and demand a license.

Same thing going on here.

Sorry how is that the same thing? For one that would be an IP issue not a licensing issue, and second i am pretty sure when you buy photoshop you license the rights to use everything in the app including the fonts in the app, thats what you are paying for after all.

Comparing a licensing issue to an IP / trademark issue is like apples and oranges though, not even a fair comparison to begin with.

No apology can make up for the utterly insane notion that you have the right to contact one of my customers over an issue with the licensing of a tool.

Well, an honest apology might have helped, but this guy didn't even provide one of those.

I can totally understand one cocknob rep, trying to further their career and impress the boss with sales, trying to shakedown both the developer and their client. It's unfortunate, but I've met people like that. I can't believe the CEO then got up and said, "Sorry about that, but that's the sort of people we want in our comapny."

I'm really stunned that after everything that has happen in the financial world over the last 5 years, this CEO thinks his company should spearhead a recreation of that kind of corporate culture.

"Do not work with this company," Rhodes wrote. "Please. You're better than that. 99.99999% of humanity is better than that, and if you've got clients you definitely don't want to risk your reputation with them by working with a company this morally bankrupt."

A bit melodramatic....

He's right about it being a bad risk, though. The whole contacting the client thing is totally over the top.

"Do not work with this company," Rhodes wrote. "Please. You're better than that. 99.99999% of humanity is better than that, and if you've got clients you definitely don't want to risk your reputation with them by working with a company this morally bankrupt."

A bit melodramatic....

Agreed. Even if it's backhanded, the guy is right. To anyone who has been in, or seen the business of sales: the aggressive sales people generally put out the good numbers, it's a constant battle along the fine line of being ethical while pursuing sales. Don't knock it until you've had the misfortune of doing it...

"If I use Photoshop to develop a logo," he wrote, "would Adobe contact my client to ask them for a license as well?"

If the logo contains intellectual property owned by adobe, such as one of their fonts, then yes Adobe would contact your client and demand a license.

Same thing going on here.

Sorry how is that the same thing? For one that would be an IP issue not a licensing issue, and second i am pretty sure when you buy photoshop you license the rights to use everything in the app including the fonts in the app, thats what you are paying for after all.

Comparing a licensing issue to an IP / trademark issue is like apples and oranges though, not even a fair comparison to begin with.

It's not in any way like that, but that's to be expected from Abhi (read the post history, she's a known copyright maximalist and borderline troll). In her hypothetical, yes, they'd be within their rights to go after the client for using Adobe trademarks inside their logo and request a license for that. That is, however, separate from the license they're asking the developer for, which is for use of the tool that produced the logo, not the contents of the creation.

"If I use Photoshop to develop a logo," he wrote, "would Adobe contact my client to ask them for a license as well?"

If the logo contains intellectual property owned by adobe, such as one of their fonts, then yes Adobe would contact your client and demand a license.

Same thing going on here.

Sorry how is that the same thing? For one that would be an IP issue not a licensing issue, and second i am pretty sure when you buy photoshop you license the rights to use everything in the app including the fonts in the app, thats what you are paying for after all.

Comparing a licensing issue to an IP / trademark issue is like apples and oranges though, not even a fair comparison to begin with.

This is an IP issue. He is deploying an app that contains somebody else's source code/binary code (I'm not sure which). You are not allowed to deploy somebody else's code, under any circumstances, unless they form a contract with you. You better not do it without reading that contract _very_ carefully, which he obviously didn't do.

In both cases, the license (whether with the development tool or adobe's font) defines what you are allowed to do with somebody else's intellectual property. The instant you step outside the terms in the license you are liable for copyright infringement to the tune of many millions of dollars (see Jammie Thomas-Rasset, only much much worse because you are a commercial business instead of a guy in his bedroom).

Adobe's license might allow to use them in your logo, but I wouldn't do it without contacting a lawyer first to go over Adobe's license with a fine toothed comb. Because if it doesn't, then you're up shit creek without a paddle.

In my opinion, asking for $5,000 is being very friendly. They could have bankrupted him if they wanted to.

You know, after reading this response, I'm still not clear what the licensing terms are. So the project is free, unless you need support? Except that as soon as you make money, it's not free? Huh?

My reading of it (the Ars article, not the CEO's comments. Those didn't really clarify anything) is that if you download the pre-compiled version of the software then you need a licence, but if you get it through github and build it yourself then you're fine.

The thing is, while the link to the pre-compiled part does link to their standard download form on the company site rather than gitbub, the link is *immediately below* the part where it says it's released under the apache licence, and there's nothing clearly stating that it needs a licence between there and the download section.

Of course, since you've probably already read the Apache licence or are aware of it's contents, you'd be unlikely to read the licence a second time on starting it (which would be the licence saying you had to purchase it) so would be unaware that there would be any differences

"If I use Photoshop to develop a logo," he wrote, "would Adobe contact my client to ask them for a license as well?"

If the logo contains intellectual property owned by adobe, such as one of their fonts, then yes Adobe would contact your client and demand a license.

Same thing going on here.

Sorry how is that the same thing? For one that would be an IP issue not a licensing issue, and second i am pretty sure when you buy photoshop you license the rights to use everything in the app including the fonts in the app, thats what you are paying for after all.

Comparing a licensing issue to an IP / trademark issue is like apples and oranges though, not even a fair comparison to begin with.

This is an IP issue. He is deploying an app that contains somebody else's source code/binary code (I'm not sure which). You are not allowed to deploy somebody else's code, under any circumstances, unless they form a contract with you. You better not do it without reading that contract _very_ carefully, which he obviously didn't do.

In both cases, the license (whether with the development tool or adobe's font) defines what you are allowed to do with somebody else's intellectual property. The instant you step outside the terms in the license you are liable for copyright infringement to the tune of many millions of dollars (see Jammie Thomas-Rasset, only much much worse because you are a commercial business instead of a guy in his bedroom).

Adobe's license might allow to use them in your logo, but I wouldn't do it without contacting a lawyer first to go over Adobe's license with a fine toothed comb. Because if it doesn't, then you're up shit creek without a paddle.

In my opinion, asking for $5,000 is being very friendly. They could have bankrupted him if they wanted to.

Since Appcelerator evidently has a good underlying product (according to some posts above), they may be able to find better ways to make money than pursuing the bankruptcy of their own customer in full view of the developer community. Rewriting their advertisements and TOS to be clear would be a low cost alternative to the "public notice" afforded by a messy public scandal of the kind you are proposing.

Gotta love the twisted interpretation "free" has nowadays. I wouldn't believe much of anything this guy says after that.

what do you mean nowadays??

Have we all forgotten when the "free phone" plastered in huge letters and the small print said 2 year contract 7 to 10 years ago. So how the hell was that free. At least now they say subsidized phones./

This is an IP issue. He is deploying an app that contains somebody else's source code/binary code (I'm not sure which). You are not allowed to deploy somebody else's code, under any circumstances, unless they form a contract with you. You better not do it without reading that contract _very_ carefully, which he obviously didn't do.

In both cases, the license (whether with the development tool or adobe's font) defines what you are allowed to do with somebody else's intellectual property. The instant you step outside the terms in the license you are liable for copyright infringement to the tune of many millions of dollars (see Jammie Thomas-Rasset, only much much worse because you are a commercial business instead of a guy in his bedroom).

Adobe's license might allow to use them in your logo, but I wouldn't do it without contacting a lawyer first to go over Adobe's license with a fine toothed comb. Because if it doesn't, then you're up shit creek without a paddle.

In my opinion, asking for $5,000 is being very friendly. They could have bankrupted him if they wanted to.

It's not as clear cut as that though. The Appcelerator Studio program (which I'm assuming is what he used) is offered for free on their website for use with development, and their github page informs you that it's licenced under the Apache licence then links to the download page. It's only if you then go to their pricing page (which would be a strange thing to do, since you've just been told it's free under the Apache licence) that you find out that some of the features of Appcelerator Studio require a licence fee.

Without a clear statement that the Apache licence no longer applies, and without telling you *why* it no longer applies, there's a big question mark over whether the new licence which requires a fee is even valid, as you've already entered into a contract with them under the Apache licence when you downloaded the application

All product that claims to be free should have exceptions listed in plain text before downloading (or installing) not some gibberish lawyer language you see in EULA while installing that would require to hire a lawyer (or be one) to have an understanding of it.

All products should have similar plain text EULA, free and paid for products.

I applaud Microsoft for doing the first step: their new licenses have a Q&A format which (mostly) clearly say what you are allowed to do with the product. Now what Microsoft did should be made into a law.

It's a clear-cut bait and switch tactic. The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) needs to contact Appcelerator and "educate" them since they usually handle illegal retail sales.

Appcelerator is simply "cherry-picking" its successful client-extortion victims that actually have a potential income. It's redolent with the odor of trolling. I wonder if that semi-apologetic VP is a practicing or former lawyer?

I think I'll either go blind or never get any work done if I actually read every damn freaking EULA I've had figuratively pushed down my throat. Essentially they all say the same thing.

I think commercial software is the only product you can "buy" that promises absolutely nothing to the purchaser and that has no possibility of warranty enforcement. It would be very interesting to find out if there is a federal entity or a commercial client of somebody like Microsoft or Apple that has insisted on a negotiated and contracted performance criteria for a purchased piece of software. In other words, the client gets a real warranty of some level of expected performance. If proof of such a warranty can be found, it might give some help to the rest of us software users to have an avenue of recourse when the software we buy doesn't work as implied by the product features or the advertising surrounding it. In other words, make EULAs illegal and enforce a reasonable warranty of performance.

Beyond the utility of some software packages, if the software has no attached warranty of performance, why pay for it? For some software, you could be throwing your money away. With the EULAs as they are, there is nothing to enable performance compliance by the manufacturer. At least with FOSS, you aren't being lied to. As with commercial software, you get no guarantees of performance, at least you get what you paid for, nothing. There's as good a chance with FOSS it will work as you want it to work as compared to commercial software.

What is out of line here is a sales person who is completely ignorant of the actual plans and pricing, and who decides to call up clients of a potential customer. The appropriate response there is to fire the sales person. I am a little surprised that this hasn't happened already, unless it has, privately.

Based on his comments it seems the CEO really cares about the perception of his company. If he wasn't aware of the effect an untrained (or deliberately ignorant), overly-aggressive salesperson can have, he surely is now.

Put yourself in his shoes. How would YOU get control of the situation?

"If I use Photoshop to develop a logo," he wrote, "would Adobe contact my client to ask them for a license as well?"

If the logo contains intellectual property owned by adobe, such as one of their fonts, then yes Adobe would contact your client and demand a license.

Same thing going on here.

Sorry how is that the same thing? For one that would be an IP issue not a licensing issue, and second i am pretty sure when you buy photoshop you license the rights to use everything in the app including the fonts in the app, thats what you are paying for after all.

Comparing a licensing issue to an IP / trademark issue is like apples and oranges though, not even a fair comparison to begin with.

This is an IP issue. He is deploying an app that contains somebody else's source code/binary code (I'm not sure which). You are not allowed to deploy somebody else's code, under any circumstances, unless they form a contract with you. You better not do it without reading that contract _very_ carefully, which he obviously didn't do.

In both cases, the license (whether with the development tool or adobe's font) defines what you are allowed to do with somebody else's intellectual property. The instant you step outside the terms in the license you are liable for copyright infringement to the tune of many millions of dollars (see Jammie Thomas-Rasset, only much much worse because you are a commercial business instead of a guy in his bedroom).

Adobe's license might allow to use them in your logo, but I wouldn't do it without contacting a lawyer first to go over Adobe's license with a fine toothed comb. Because if it doesn't, then you're up shit creek without a paddle.

In my opinion, asking for $5,000 is being very friendly. They could have bankrupted him if they wanted to.

That's the point, he's not. He wrote it using their tool, nothing more. While this may violate their EULA (and thus, he must pay them the licensing fee for using the software in that way), they do not own the code he wrote or the product he produced.

It appears that this instance of you being wrong (yet again) is due to a lack of comprehension about the issue. Yes, as I pointed out, if he were actually handing out something containing their property, your example might work, but the fact is that he's not, and nothing in the article implies that he was. They're saying that he needs to pay them a license fee for charging money for his product, and they're trying to double-dip by saying that his client ALSO needs to pay a SEPARATE license fee for using a program that just happened to be written with theirs (it would be like Microsoft trying to say they owned your book because you typed it in Windows on notepad.exe).

Fortunately, your opinion isn't worth much (or anything) especially when based on false premise. At a bare minimum, there's a solid case for bait-and-switch / false advertising given how much "free" is promoted with the product, and how poorly and obscurely documented the terms under which a fee is required are.

Sean Gallagher / Sean is Ars Technica's IT Editor. A former Navy officer, systems administrator, and network systems integrator with 20 years of IT journalism experience, he lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland.